Tag Archives: Travel & Leisure

(published in Travel and Leisure)
As dusk falls over Greenwich Village, I’m at Minetta Tavern, sipping a martini with friends who last drank here 61 years ago. “It’s like night and day,” says Lynn Reiser, a handsome painter, as she assesses the old bar where Wall Street guys now order rye whiskey at 35 bucks a shot. “It’s the people. We were all artists then.” Reiser arrived in the Village in the 1940’s, when young artists and writers started coming for the camaraderie, conversation, …[Read more]

It’s lunchtime in Trieste, the handsome Italian city on the Adriatic, and at Buffet Da Pepi, a genial crowd surges forward toward the serving station, lured by fresh pork simmering in fragrant broth. The steam rises. The three guys serving up the food resemble old-time countermen at a New York deli or maybe Tom Cruise as the bartender in Cocktail. The art is in the speed, the deft theatrical wielding of carving fork and knife as they haul the meat onto a marble slab, carve off slices of fresh pork, …[Read more]

(for Travel & Leisure)
Late on a chilly afternoon, a cold rain is falling. It turns dark. The streets empty. The cobblestones are slick. A man seems to follow you. Suddenly, Stockholm—with its sunny summers, star-spangled winter nights, placid harbor, and beautiful blond youth—is recast as a secret, hidden, frightening place. “A day for murder,” says one of the tourists as we descend on Mellqvist Kaffebar.
“This is it,” they whisper to one another—the café where Stieg Larsson …[Read more]